When he screams
by Hitorah
Summary: "How awful must it feel?" Loki's exhale scattered the smoke that began to trickle down farther and farther. "Knowing her final moments were spent fearing who she held most dear?" -Clintasha/Blackhawk/Blackeye. AU Movieverse. Rating for language, violence.- -Part 2 added!-
1. Chapter 1

Would've had this done sooner but I burned my hand on the 4th of July ; a firework blew out the back while I was planting it. No worries, I was alright, burned my fingers red on my right hand but I have been wearing a glove to protect it. That helped it heal nicely... as did taking time to stare at Jeremy Renner's cameo in _Thor_, heha. I started this last week when I was both extremely giddy AND up at an insane hour of the night. Dunno why but my writing goes dark when I'm at my happiest. Weird, huh?

I've seen a few people take a crack at this scenario. Figured it was my turn.

* * *

"_And when he wakes,  
__he'll have just enough time to see the work he's done,  
__and when he screams,  
__I'll break his skull!  
__This is my bargain, you mewling quim!_"

* * *

...This wasn't home. This wasn't headquarters. This wasn't the Project Pegasus building.

He wasn't quite sure what this was.

Slowly he eased off of his back. He sat up with caution that came from countless weeks of battling injury, from gashes, gunshots, bone bruises, burns and whatever else the universe threw at him. The idea of jolting upright like a patient in a sitcom was laughable; the amount of pain that would cause could make one black out while imagining it. Healing burns would rip and peel, broken bones would pulse and grind, open wounds would strech and bleed. Save the theatrics for television sets and silver screens he did not watch, he was going about the correct way. In an unknown place, at an unknown time, in an unknown condition, the least he could do was check and make sure of what was and was not in one piece.

All four limbs were still attached. Soreness was a given, seeing as he was waking in some random, cast off state. Bruises lined the visible skin on his arms, some yellow, some red, some that would undoubtedly become purple as time went on. Whatever had happened, the assailant had done damage but he seemed to have deflected it rather well. Other than a patch on his chest where fabric was thin and armor absent that had been cut open to reveal a thin red mark, there were no open sores or gouges; blood did not pool under him. A quick glance over his shoulder, down at the silver grating floor, proved that true-

The motion of turning his head caused him to see stars. Had he been healthy he would have strung together a line of curses that would make a fisherman recoil; it had been proven, hadn't it, that profanities increased tolerance to pain? What better way to test it? (Then again, if he had been healthy, there would be no reason to curse to start with.) With a groan that he could not suppress, he was forced to complete the motion, to make his body follow his head until he had straightened out, essentially laying on his stomach against the silver grating that, thanfully, seemed to be clean of any sort of bodily fluid. Realizing that he was panting, he deepened his breaths in an attempt to slow his heart, to send the blood back to his head, his brain. His forehead was put against the grating, his eyes were closed, his fingers curled in between the rungs of the floor and clenched as if holding on to a net for dear life.

As his heart stopped racing and its pulsing became less evident in his ears, sounds of utter chaos began to register. Holding his breath, he cast out his awareness. Clammering, pounding, shooting, screaming were soon accompanied by the sick smell of fuel and fire. A strange sensation threatened to make him lose whatever was in his stomach; the feeling of beeing off balance, Barton finally realized that whatever he was in was _tilting_. Putting weight on one hand to keep him from rolling over, he continued his personal assessment; throbs and stings he associated with bruises were beginning to register, stemming from his arms to his back. Turning his head more slowly, apprehensively, he could still see no sign of an open wound on his person; while his head felt like he had either gotten punched or had fallen, there were no blood trails going down his exposed skin and no pressure from the hidden.

"Ah, Agent Barton."

Every single cell in his battered body went on high alert. The sickness to his stomach was forgotten, the headrush barely noticed as he jumped to his feet, because _no_, Clint Barton did not scramble. On his feet, his weight on his toes, one hand clutching his bow (which he discovered was beside him all along)-

The quiver was empty. Not even a single arrow, just a few dozen fistfuls of air.

From farther down the grated walkway, shrouded by the incoming smoke and darkness, the demigod gave a throaty chuckle. The Tesseract fueled spear in his hand cast a pale blue, eerie glow on the piping, railing and equipment that surrounded them, including his own features; if he hadn't looked the role of a devil before he did then.

"Welcome back."

Barton moved more cautiously now. His own eyes stared into the demigod's as he went from his knees to standing almost upright, his body still turned, his legs still spread as if he had an arrow to let loose. He had a fist clenched around his bow to where his knuckles were deathly white. There was still a good distance between them, perhaps fifty feet, but that began to shrink as the demigod began a leisurely pace across the metal bridge. It was sickening, how the god in man's clothing strode forth, his shoulders relaxed and swinging as if he was approaching an ally in a park. He was no ally and this industrial hellhole was no fucking park. Alarms were going off, Barton heard them now- sirens that struck him as if someone was slamming railroad spikes into every nerve ending on his skull-

The demigod was around thirty feet away now and, for the moment, stopped. Tilting his head, Loki put on a concerned face, one hundred percent meant to mock. He gave a few _tsks_ of his tongue. "It looks as if you are all out of arrows."

There was no need to respond. What would he say? _No shit, you melodramatic prick_? ...now that he though about it, maybe he should have spoken up, if only to get the satisfaction from making the demigod sneer. His grip on the bow was becoming painful. As he eased his fingers to allow bloodflow back into them he brought the weapon in front of him, the black material creating a thin barrier between himself and Loki.

Said antagonist tilted his head in the opposite direction as before, narrowing his eyes and hunching his shoulders down in a challenge. "I don't suppose you plan to hit me with that?"

"Come a bit closer," Barton dared, the darkness in his voice making the surrounding shadows seem like sunshine during the summer. "We'll find out."

"I believe I shall pass. Bad things seem to happen to those who are... _close_ to you."

It was going to take a lot more than inflection on a word to break his facade. Instead of narrowing his eyes and giving the manipulative man the upper hand Barton remained still, his eyes searching his enemy's. Loki was taunting him, as if the dialogue had not made that obvious enough but there was something more in those eyes, some sense of knowing, knowing something that he, codename Hawkeye, did not. _What is it you're playing at?_

The man spread his arms. Barton flinched, his hand tightening around the bow once more in anticipation of a blast from that spear- but it never came. Instead, Loki seemed to be motioning to the area around him, the smoke gathering at the ceiling and the noise echoing all around (he had to ignore the splitting headache, _he had to ignore it,_ no matter how many orbs of light began to dance at the edge of his vision). Smiling as if addressing a work of art, the demigod gave a chuckle worthy of a famished hyena before warping his voice, making it a smooth _purr_ that would have been better used on Wallstreet coming from the mouth of a crook. "Look around you. Tell me, where is this place? I belive you can figure it out. Enlighten me, how did you get here?"

As much as he hated to, Barton had to break the eye contact in order to glance around. With the air thick with black fog it took a moment to peer through and see distinguishing features, and with the pulsing at his temples it was almost impossible to concentrate and process the images once he _did_ spy them. At last it seemed to dawn on him, most likely caused by the sudden leveling out of the walkway where he had once been having to compensate for the massive tilt to the right;

This had to be the hellicarrier.

Where he had kept his countenenance from shifting before he failed to now. The hellicarrier- how the fuck had he ended up thousands of feet _above _the planet when, last he remembered, he had been stationed in the rafters of a facility that was _underground_?

As his eyes continued the scan of the now familiar service walkway, his own weapon came into view. His gaze shifted down to the bow from attraction alone, just as a patron's eyes drift across a painting due to key points in the picture itself, not from their own free will.

Had he not had such a tight grip on the weapon he may have dropped it.

One end was smeared in blood.

Images flashed in the back of the archer's mind as the demigod smirked with pointed, canine like teeth. Did the man step closer? The steps were muffled by the noise roaring in Barton's ears, the siren that had existed both in the moment and the memory he had somehow triggered-

_He couldn't go for an arrow to fire, not even an incendiary, not if he wanted to kill himself at the same time. She was crafty, he knew that, but he hadn't expected her to grab the bowstring, to hold it, drawing them into close quarters, her eyes blazing. Oh, was this about to get __**exciting**__. Adrenaline pounding in his chest from the thrill of the fight, he continued on- no mercy! From there close quarters continued, hit after hit being exchanged until he had one hand in her hair and the other on a knife, drawing her head back at as great an angle as it would go without snapping. Somehow she had freed herself, playing dirty and sinking her teeth into his wrist. God __**damn**__, was it going to be satisfying when-_

_His feet came out from under him, he was being brought down, his head hit the guard railing; momentarially stunned he remained still, his eyes staring down at his hands. The knife was gone, his quiver somehow empty._

_ But there was still the bow._

_ He looked back at her, putting on a neutral face. He snarled her name but the shock of the hit lessened the sound of aggression. She faltered; did she think he was free?_

_ Compromised. He'd done it._

_ The way he was positioned, he had an arm hidden under him. The same arm clenched around the bow. With a scream, primal and insidious, he turned his body, coming to his feet with agility that would have made his SHIELD namesake proud; and just as a hawk tore through the pelt of its prey, the bow extended as his arm came around, the tip striking her neck, slicing with a satisfying sound, with dripping blood dropping down through the floor. The slice had been just __**perfect**__, going from the first bit of exposed skin to the right, across the jugular to her left jawline, but not as perfect as her __**scream**__!_

"It was a lovely series of events,"

Loki's voice brought him back to reality.

The demigod was close now, trailing on fifteen feet as his boots crossed a SHIELD emblem painted in black on the silver grating. He still had his arms extended like the messiah he believed himself to be better than. "How _marvelously_ you performed back there. I must admit, Barton, I had my doubts about you. You have heart, I meant it when I said that-"

With every step Loki took over an invisible fifteen foot limit Barton took one back.

"-but you are an assasin which relies on surprise, precision, _time_. She was an attack dog; _Ready, fire, aim_. If her first shot missed she had three more that would not. While it could not have happened better, _her_ being the one to confront you, I feared her all out assault would wear you down. But you kept a calm mind, dear Hawkeye, just as an archer should, and won when she was blinded by her rage." Those wolfish teeth were bared again as Barton was forced to pivot, turning and following a new tangent when the walkway no longer went straight. "Though that rage faded, did it not? That red hued anger directed toward me was smothered the moment you swung that bow."

_The scream was sudden and short, a shriek that he had heard from her lips only a few choice times before. With her stumbling back, a hand applying pressure to the jagged, flesh revealing tear on her throat, he swung again. This time she caught the body of the weapon with her free hand, holding it away from her where his aim had been to bludgeon. No matter; he lashed out with a foot, his heel connecting with her left leg below her knee. The snap he heard did not come from his bow. From instinct alone, not any action of her choosing, her body dropped to take weight off of the fractured, possibly broken leg. He had to strike then, while she was down for that millisecond, for he knew she would fight through the pain of a broken limb as she had so many times before. The upper hand was his; without wasting a beat, with a swing worthy of the seventh game in a World Series, he sent the bulk of the bow he would need to replace anyway into her ribs. Snap, crack, thud; reduced to laying on her side a stide away, her cough came in a dry, heaving sputter and blood not only covered her hand but flowed down her jaw, covered the teeth she snapped shut so tight it was audible._

_ Those eyes were still blazing._

"How awful must it feel?" Loki's exhale scattered the smoke that began to trickle down farther and farther. Barton's own breathing was getting heavier; he found himself crouching to get at the thinner, more pure air. "Knowing her final moments were spent fearing who she held most dear?"

The walkway was ending; The handle of a door pressed into Barton's back and any additional step would have it dig painfully into his spine. At the same time his heel nudged loose piping; something in those background images at the back of his mind told him that Banner had snapped, that he had probably knocked these loose before being calmed down (or whatever had happened to him). Feigning a cough, putting an arm over his mouth as if a cloud of smoke had gotten to him at last, he dropped down, putting his weight on his toes with his knees bent. Walking once more, Loki cackled and murmured about the weakness of the human condition. When the demigod stepped off of the straight path and onto the turn Barton jolted up, two of the broken steel rails in his hands. He threw them both. The genuine shock in Loki's eyes did little to slow Barton's painfully quick heart, but it was something. The demigod used the spear to eliminate one of the rails and had to duck away from the second. With Loki's eyes elsewhere Barton grabbed onto another section of loose railing, put his foot on the locked doorknob and thrust himself up, climbing onto an upper level, the same upper level as he'd seen in those flashbacks.

He took off sprinting, navigating the deck despite the smoke and darkness that threatened to impede him.

_With her down on the ground and dripping with the red she wanted so desperately to wipe from her ledger, he felt it was safe enough to cast his sights around, to search for either his knife or one of his arrows. The moment she exited his focal vision, she moved. His first reaction was anger, the second was shock; how had she moved so sudden, so fast?  
Her hands had gotten him by the ankles; he was going down. On his back, he gave himself no time to regain his breath; he kicked out again and hit nothing but air. Jolting up, getting back onto his feet, weight on his toes and poised to spring, he was too slow; she entered his vision again, using her hands to keep weight off of the injured and bloody leg. She threw herself forward. Confident that he could take her in a weakened state, he did little to move out of the way. Instead of her hands going to some weapon she had found in the background or on her body they went for his neck; her ams going around his throat, tight as if she intended to strangle, she used her weight to knock him back-_

_ -and without the guard rails in place, torn away by Banner moments before, they both went over the edge._

That was why he had woke where he had, on his back, staring upward, trying to stand and falling over like a newborn foal.

Back on the upper level Barton ran like a bat out of hell; not his best idea given the way his heart _pounded_ in his chest, his ears, racing to where it threatened to take his breath away. It was getting hard to breathe, _fuck_, and the taste of the smoke was beginning to linger on his tongue, in his mouth. However, just like the headache before, he had to push back his selfish thoughts of fresh air and water; he had to keep going; he had to glance over every inch of railing, searching the lower levels, _searching_-

After what seemed to be hours of running he found the section of the lower deck that was in complete disarray, the walkways being torn up and contorted in every which way, loose piping, steam coming out of who-knows-what, broken electronics sparking like lightning in the smoke, and a section of walkway smeared in blood.

God..

Oh god...

It had happened.

It had honestly fucking _happened_.

"Natasha?" He called as he knelt down; the word somehow managed to echo over the sirens. The grating by his feet was a deep red, stained and smeared. There was a pool on a soild piece of flooring below where the results of the fight had slipped through and collected... It made his throat tighten with nausea and a wave of emotion he could not identify. Maybe it was shame.

There was a shine from the level below, a glint, the travel of light across the barrel of something incredibly unfriendly. Instinct told him to duck back just in time; a shot rocketed out from the darkness, the muzzle flash a becon against the shadows, and the round buried itself into an electrical panel; after an initial burst of heat and light that had Barton shielding his face with his arms, a scream rang out;

"You son of a bitch!"

It was pure, raw, unprescidented anger, a sound that came from deep in the human psyche, buried where the most primordioal of instincts were hidden; like a rabid, cornered animal, the owner of the voice would stop at damn near _nothing_, and there he was was on the recieving end.

"Send Barton down here, _I fucking dare you!_ I'll take him down, I'll put him out of your misery, then I'll put a round right through your skull! _We'll see if you're imortal or not!_"

The back of his mind was quite busy that day; something in his subconscious realized that, battered and bloody as he feared she was, that insane loyalty was still there. She was not a soft woman, no, she put bullet holes in every stereotype man could imagine- but no being, man, woman or god could say she was not true to her word, her alliances.

Instead of crawling away to seek help for her own wounds, she was still fighting for him. "Nat-!" For his own good he stayed away from the edge. She would fire, she had a half dozen clips just waiting to be loaded. "Nat, It's me, I swear on-"

A shot hit the railing dangerous close to where he crouched; she had used his shadow as a spot to aim. He jumped back to a solid panel, a hand pressed against the wall to help hold himself. Perhaps it was the smoke that was thick as hell at this height, or maybe it was the knowledge that her crazed fury was _his fault,_ but he was coming close to retching.

"_Prove it!_"

"The last time I saw you before your stint at Stark Industries was in Texas," The words came from his throat before he could stop them and he was thankful that they were coherent, not slurring and tumbling over one another as if he was drunk. "You'd grown your hair out as your cover even though I thought it looked better on you short. You had taken a trip by horseback on a mare no one said you should buy; goddamned thing was so flighty and you had bruises and scrapes from where she tried to toss you. You went through the desert by night to an old frontier town, one where you've got that secret home we sometimes share. No one checks there for life, _fuck_, it's a goddamned ghost town not even history books or gold rush maps remember-" He was genuinely coughing by then. Tears blurred his vision; not all of them were from the dirty air. "God- where are you?"

After a pause that nearly had him fearing she had lost consciousness, she fired another shot, one pointed directly up and meant to serve as a signal flare. The muzzle flash's location committed to memory, Barton went back to the section of walkway where they had fallen. Ignoring the blood that now stained his clothing, his hands, he grapped onto the edge and went over. His feet did not touch the lower level; he let go, dropped, tucked and rolled once he landed. In cleaner air he took gasping breaths which his lungs thanked him for with fresh energy. Or perhaps the newlyfound purpose of finding _her_ had put vigor into his steps.

The lower vantage point threw him off for a moment before he got his bearings. Right. He had to turn right, go down a small set of stairs, find where he could see the walkway he had come down from... or, as he came to realize, he could follow the trail of blood. Breathing through his mouth so the copper smell would not overpower him, he had to get on his knees to duck down under a platform to get into a service area. It was a wonderful place to hide; he never would have thought to look here, not with how dark it had become.

The sound of a gun being aimed was hard to miss, even moreso where he was since the sirens seemed more distant, quieter. Barton remained still, his eyes staring into the darkness, wide as possible to shorten the time it took to adjust as much as possible. Once he was able to distinguish a human form against the machinery, he lifted a hand, slowly extending it forward. "What... makes you believe this is me?" He asked, his voice hoarse from the run, the drop, the smoke. "I.. I could still be under control. I could be stringing this story, Nat."  
"You didn't specify the color of the horse."

Barton narrowed his eyes. "...What?"

"You didn't over accentuate the details." Her voice was strained; God dammit, he couldn't hold still any longer. Inching along in the darkness he stopped only when his hand grazed then grasped her shoulder. He helped her to sit upright, an arm curled around her side but avoiding the ribs he feared were hurting her, the very ribs he had struck. Despite the fight that was burned into his memory she made no noises of pain, gave no hint at being hurt; only the way she allowed the arm to remain around her, to linger in an intimate gesture, gave her condition away.

"What color _was_ the mare?" Barton kept up the small talk. His hands now at her jawline, he tilted her head back in the dark.

"Black.. but beginning to grey. She looked... looked like a blue roan because of it. But her face was wrong. White, not black..."

Where his heart had once jumped into his throat it now fell back into place. He exhaled a breath that shook more than his fingers; the gash on her throat, the one the tip of his bow had created, it was no where near as bad as that memory had lead him to believe. The grotesque image of the weapon cutting through muscle, tendon and artery was just that; a sick, twisted nightmare. That did not mean the weapon had not left its mark; instead of the deep, fatal gash that the demigod's trickery had lead him to believe there was a smaller gouge, one that slit skin and left uneven, gleaming edges. However, the carotid had been spared. For once in his life, he was glad to have missed a shot.

"If you'd said all that... every detail.. I would have known it was someone else. Not you. You are terrible at remembering coat colors..."

"Quit talking, please..."

In the darkness she smirked, her teeth flashing white with none of the blood he had seen in the false memory. (_Thank goodness..._) "You asked."

"_How touching._"

He did not need to hiss _stay low_ under his breath. Beside him Natasha had crouched down, hiding in the shadows. Barton remained most of the way upright, putting his palms down on the flooring, one in front of him and one on the other side of Natasha, his arms forming a posessive barrier, a protective embrace because dammit all if he was going to let that that son of a bitch get anywhere near her again.

* * *

There were several ways I could have ended this but I decided to just leave it here; if I want to continue it, see how the movie would have ended with how I've twisted it, I will. Though, as some of y'all know, I've got another Fanfiction project to be working on.


	2. Part 2

Sorry that I haven't updated any of my stories in a couple weeks. I've been drawing a lot again lately so photoshop has become very distracting, haha.

I got something in the mail the other day, though, that's got me right back to writing- _Road to Marvel's the Avengers_. Everyone should check it out. I've never read any sort of "comic" before buying that book so it's awesome to see a comic set in the _movieverse_!

That little advertisement out of the way, "Chapter 1" of this piece was cut off because I wasn't quite sure which way to go from where I had gotten to, so I left it open for possible continuations _or_ for you all to think what you wanted. Two/three weeks have gone by and I've had plenty of time to think. Looks like this here oneshot will turn out to be rather long with multiple parts whenever I dub it finally done. Not that you all are complaining.

Hopefully I caught all typos but don't feel afraid to point anymore out. Happy reading. :)

* * *

**Part 2**

"_How touching._"

He did not need to hiss _stay low_ under his breath. Beside him Natasha had crouched down, hiding in the shadows. Barton remained most of the way upright, putting his palms down on the flooring, one in front of him and one on the other side of Natasha, his arms forming a posessive barrier, a protective embrace because dammit all if he was going to let that that son of a bitch get anywhere near her again.

"_You are doing a marvelous job of getting on my nerves, Agent Romanoff. Come, come, where is your moxie now?_"

Peering upward through a slit of light (hard to believe that it was the same gap he had slipped his entire body through) he could not see the demigod but the voice had been full; he was out of sight but not far off. Perhaps he was closer than it appeared; the smoke was still obscuring Barton's vision beyond ten, twenty feet. As someone who relied heavily on eyesight for success, suddenly having it restricted was unsettling, beyond unsettling to the point where he worried more about that than the hit to the head he took when he fell from the upper walkway. At the same time there was concern at the back of his mind, wonder to whether or not the fires would hinder their escape-

"_Where's the round you were going to put through my skull?"_

"There's a service shaft right behind me," Her voice was quiet, a whisper that was barely audible, a tone of voice that came from years of necessity, training and application. Disoriented still from attempts to piece together what Loki had exaggerated in his memories and what had been left alone, Barton was not sure if Natasha was currently bottling away great pain (like he knew she could do for hours on end and with a face as sweet as honey) or simply baring her teeth against minor hindraces that neither of them had paid attention to since the toddler age of skinned knees being the end of the world. If either of them had such simple childhoods where scrapes were such a great evil in comparison to what they did not know walked the earth back then, he would be surprised to where, maybe, he'd buy a round of drinks for the entire SHIELD cast. Maybe he'd drink them all himself.

Natasha's voice continuing a fraction of a second after her last remark brought him back to reality- something she had quite a nack for doing. He wasn't complaining, not at all. With her voice dipping down to a range he doubted even dogs would hear, he had to lean his head down, to get closer, and even so he was not sure if he heard correctly. The sentence he put together with the snippits he caught made sense, so he assumed it was indeed what she said. "He hasn't found us yet. Loki's voice- it wavered, echoed from a few different directions. He looked around when he spoke. There's a service shaft, I can tap the handle with my foot." But she would not, would not risk the tap making a sound that could help the demigod find them. Trapped in a den like foxes avoiding the hunt, they would be powerless. "We can back away and slip inside." She seemed to be quite familiar with the layout of these lower levels. He wouldn't ask why or how, though her more detailed work with SHIELD as a shadow may have given her more indepth tours.. or perhaps she had slipped away, gone off on her own from whoever else was onboard, and plotted various means of escape from every accessable cranny on this beast. That sounded so plausible that he physically nodded.

"Show me the way," He had been unsure of how loud his own dialogue would be; thankfully it was just as quiet, if only a bit rougher from the sprint, drop and shock from a few moments ago. Though the blood no longer pulsed to the point of a palpable throbbing in his temple, he knew his body was still recovering from sudden exhertion, not to mention a fight of the ages with the master assassin that made up the other half of SHIELD's deadly duo. "I'll help you out of here." It was the fucking least he could do, was it not? He still was not sure if her leg had been touched or if the sickening _snap_ in his memories was entirely of Loki's creation. Her ribs were also his concern; and, even if her neck had not been severed and bloody as a ritual sacrafice there was still an open wound that would need medical attention to ensure the worst she got from the ordeal was a scar. She would not go into something as self-centered as plastic or other alteration surgeries. She wore scars (that could be hidden) with pride and remembered when she got each one while he had no chance to do the same- though he doubted he would ever forget the origin of that particular one, that line that would flow across her neck...

"Just follow me."

She felt alright enough to order and take the lead. That was not much to go off of; that was normal Natasha, injured Natasha, Natasha in alias... Her voice was strong, her mind even stronger; her body, her actions would be the first to give in to injury. He would have to... to wait and see.

Drawing his right arm up, pulling it from the protective stance it had made around her, he watched as Natasha began slipping back. Slow, calculated, with the grace and fluidity of a big cat, each motion was done with the utmost certainty that no part of her body would hit part of their surroundings and set off soundwaves that would become their death song, the melody of their demise. Barton saw now with her out of the way a series of grooves, places to pull out service panels and breakers; perhaps there were computer servers nearby, as well. The noise from the cooling fans, which he had attributed to the carrier's massive turbines before, may have been hiding them all along. Thank god for Windows. With Natahsa slipping into a shaft that looked half air duct, half service hall, Barton did as he had before; inching his way little by little , he found the edge of the floor he sat on, put his legs over the edge, and let his body drop in agonizing slow motion until his toes found the surface below.

Unlike being below ground in the sense of terra firma, this shaft was not significantly darker than the open space above- in fact, it was brighter than the spot where he had hid with Natasha. Blinking twice to allow his green-gray eyes to adjust to the new light levels, Barton ignored whatever bumps and bruises were bothering him and cast out his awareness.

"_Left,_" Natasha had murmured from up ahead in that direction. With a nod he knew she would more sense than see, Barton put out both of his hands, extended his limbs until the caloused fingertips grazed the walls; that was all they did, a graze so slight that made him wonder if he really had _touched_ the outer walls or if his mind was fabricating the sensation to make up for the lack of actual contact. Either way, he had at least his own wingspan of space from side to side. Top to bottom? Like a captive testing the space of his jail cell Barton stood, his upper body hunched and his head bowed until his shoulders touched metal so cold he nearly flinched. Five feet of space, at least; it was the best he could estimate without a measuring tape or a more precise examination. Like he had too many times before, he began to jog along in a crouched position that would leave him needing ice on his lower back. Without having to think about it he knew his bow would be in his hand, though a flash of his eyes down at the weapon showed that he held it incorrectly, backwards, with the end slick with blood pointed as far from him as possible.

_I'll have to get a new one._

The ambient light around him increased every five to ten steps he took, gradually enough so that he was not blinded by a sudden onset. Long lost by whatever fight had occurred before (_Don't think about it now_) Barton had to make do without his sunglasses; even a normal level of light in a naturally lit area was painful to his more sensitive eyes. He would have to deal with it until he was cleaned up and free to rummage the cargo bay for some new ones and... oh, right, trying to avoid a Demigod that had gone strangely quiet in a carrier filled with alarms, shooting and other forms of discord. Could they, he and Natasha, have shaken Loki so easily? Or was he already at the exit to this path, waiting? Their opponent was something they were never trained to face, a being using things that could only be described as monsters and impossible magic. Barton believed- no, he _knew_ that he and Natasha would be able to shake any mortal enemy; they were spies, not only trained to but _accustomed_ to vanishing, covering their tracks, evading anyone, _everyone_. However, that was just it. This man was not _mortal_, he was - for lack of a better term - a god. If anything, the man in Loki's clothing proved that with that spear, with the way a single touch of the weapon's tip had sent a chill up through his, Barton's, chest, up his neck until it hit his mind, his eyes-

Up ahead was the exit to the service shaft, he assumed so due to the increasing light flow. Natasha had stopped; a less observant man would have walked right into her back. Instead, he came to her side and crouched down, glanced over at her eyes then followed her gaze out to whatever had grabbed her attention.

Beyond the thick metal and glass of a service elevator (reminiscent of those used on old coal mines) was one of the hangars. While the hellicarrier sat in the water this bay would be used for submersibles; when Fury had no plans for aqueous combat this zone was a storage for the more intricate aircraft, SHIELD's favorite toys as opposed to the Air Force's jets that adorned the actual runway up above. One of those thick doors was opening; the thunderous noise of grinding and moving metal almost completely overshadowed the alarms that were beginning to return.

One of SHIELD's planes was moving. The god was racing across the floor, one man in combat gear beside him. (Barton's eyesight was better at a distance. From where he was it was all too easy to see the blue, misty hue in the man's eyes. Loki's "companion" was simply a brainwashed soldier.) With the bay door open, whoever was in the cockpit of the plane opened the doors to the craft. Loki tossed in the spear before hauling himself up with grace that made Barton nearly snear. The soldier narrowly made it inside, with one foot dangling and threatening to bring his body with it, before the plane was airborn.

The demigod made a show of leaning over where he sat, his eyes peering back into where he had escaped from, as if he _knew_ someone would be able to see...

Like that, as sudden as when he had shown himself in Germany, the demigod was gone.

_Shit_.

A open hatch on the side of the ship cleared the air at first but soon a torrent of smoke rushed in like water into a crack on a ship's hull. Before the thick, black air lessened visibility, Barton had seen that one of the hellicarrier's turbines was badly damaged, was stripped of most of the reflector panels and billowing with smoke (the same smoke which poured in) yet, at the same time, the turbine was operational; it still spun.

Natasha narrowed her eyes for a split second before she glanced down. _We need to shut that hatch_, Barton had inferred from her eyes alone, a tick he had picked up on during countless hours spent by his partner's side. There was little to feel proud of; he had seen her hand when she had leaned forward, when she tested the floor panels in front of her, applied more and more of her weight until she dubbed it safe to walk on. Her hand, the glove badly ripped to where she had torn it off at some point, had been red; it was the sort of red that came from putting a palm over a wound and applying pressure before wiping that hand on something, anything in order to make it less slick. Purposely, he hung back to watch how Natasha moved, how she put weight on her right leg- the one he recalled striking. The material on her shin was not damaged enough to be torn but it was easy to see where he had gotten her. Still, the Black Widow did not falter; he could see nothing in her body language that hinted at an injury to that limb, an injury that would be impossible to hide with how she had walked out of the shaft, across three floor panels, and into the elevator. In the cage-like device, she turned, her eyes trained on his as she quirked a brow. _Come on already._

_ I'm coming._

With Loki gone there was no hiding the cough. Barton raised a hand to his mouth to stifle the sound before he followed, glad for the sudden lack of a tight cieling and the ability to stand upright. He rolled his shoulders once he was inside the elevator. Natasha was staring out the glass, staring toward the open hatch. No one knew what went through that woman's mind but Barton would not doubt it was a plan, whether it involved some sort of software hack or was as simple as a walk-through of a mental map of the hellicarrier until she found the controls.

Doors, hatches, openings such as the one Loki had escaped through made similar sounds both opening and closing; the sound of metal on metal rang out again along with a deep groan that ceased when the hatch began to come down, bringing darkness with it. Beside him Natasha tensed and, if he saw that right, _flinched_ before she forced herself to ease. Even with smoke in the air it was not hard to get a look at Natasha's neck. The grotesque slash he had believed was only an illusion created by the demigod but that did not mean the woman's neck, in places, was not as red as her hair. Her side was to him so he could not see the injury head on but that did not stop him from opening his mouth, from starting to give a concerned opinion. Before he could get two syllables off Natasha had physically opened the elevator door and had walked into the open space in the hagar. Barton followed her, adjusting the bow in his hand so he held it correctly; there was no telling if an enemy (whoever it may be) would come out of the smoke. Where she stood, Natasha turned her body, swiveled it to get a complete view of her surroundings. There seemed to be only one thing on her mind; _What closed that door?_

Something was charging. Some sort of weapon. With reflexes that could not be timed Barton flashed up his bow, only to recall that there were no arrows in his quiver. The turn itself brough him face to face with what he may have once thought to be some sort of drone - hands raised with glowing cells on its palms - but he knew better. No matter what corner of the world he was on there was no escaping the constant newsreels that exhalted the great "Iron Man."

"Who's this?" The voice of Tony Stark rang out, though it had a slight metallic tone, a soft echo that came from open space inside the helmet.

"Repulsors down, Stark," Natasha had not turned from where she had stood, her eyes still on the inside of the hatch door. Her voice, as Barton had expected, was stern in tone and level in volume. "He's with me."

"Agent Romanoff," This second voice was new. Barton turned so one shoulder was to Stark and the other was toward the newcomer. He had seen enough comic books and propoganda to recognize Captain America when he saw him. Perhaps he had been hit harder in the head than he thought, for it took a moment of thought to remember the debriefing on the HYDRA flying wing being found in artic ice. It did not explain, however, what the millionaire and the World War Two hero were doing in the same hangar, seemingly on the same team, _flanking him_. A second glance over at Rogers showed Barton that the man not only had the iconic shield on his right arm but an automatic weapon in his left hand, finger on the trigger and the barrel pointed at the ground. The man had sympathy, genuine concern about him while there was nothing but a blue, pulsing power in those optical slots of the Iron Man suit. "You're bleeding."

The face pice of the Iron Man suit lifted like the rear door of a vehicle. Tony Stark tilted his head while Steve Rogers took a step forward, a step toward Natasha. "Christ, Romanoff," Stark spat. "that's a nasty one."

Barton turned his back on Stark, only to hear the _hum_ of those repulsors - as Natasha called them - charging up once again. Needless to say Barton did not leave his back exposed; arrows or no arrows, he still spun on his toes to face Stark once more. Was he looking for a fight? An incredibly one-sided, lopsided, landslide fight? (_Let me fire an incendiary and we'll see who kicks whose ass._)

...Incendiary. The word sparked something in the back of his mind, hinted some memory that was being held just out of reach, that was being waved tantinizingly like bait to a pavlovian dog. Why, for no real reason that he could surmise, did he feel like he would not have any of those tips left; that, if he hit the corresponding combination into the handle of the intelligent bow, he would hear nothing from the quiver but the warning _hum_ that meant he needed to check with Coulson and acquire a new supply? (He had used them. The most dangerous weapon he had on his person, reserved for only the most dire of circumstances, and he had _used them_. _Fuck_-! On what, on _who_-?)

"What's the damage outside?"

"Agent Romanoff-"

The group around him was talking. Steve had tried to cut Natasha off but she ended up doing so to him, instead. "We leveled out a few minutes ago. That means at least one of the two turbines is back online. Am I right, Captain?"

Unwavering in his battle stance, Stark replied; "I gave Turbine One a kickstart. Manually. You can probably tell. Turbine Three is being rewired along with the major computer systems now that the control room isn't under seige. Now, why don't you tell us about Robin Hood _and_ that shiner on your neck?"

"My name is-" Barton began but was stopped when Natasha lifted a hand. She had two fingers pressed to her ear where Barton noticed she had on the standard communicator, as did Rogers and Stark. All three must have gotten the same message, the same order, for that thoughtful-yet-listening haze filled all three sets of eyes. The silence, to him, was deafening. As if the silence had placed him in a sort of solitary confinement, slowly, it had begen to dawn on him, the position he was currently in. The rafters of the Project Pegasus building made up the last of his actual memories. Selvig had been working below along with a staff that he knew by face rather than name. The Tesseract had begun to, as Selving said, "misbehave;" electricity began to fluctuate even if the power was shut off. She was a power source; she simply turned it back on. From his higher perch he had kept keen eyes on every entrance and exit, on every flat monitor he could see, had searched for any sign of tampering (of which, there were none). Of all people, Nick Fury had come by. The situation must have been deemed worse that he, himself, originally thought. He had propelled down, had begun to tell his commander all that he knew-

-and now found himself in SHIELD's most advanced hybrid air/watercraft, able to do nothing but watch as potential allies (and the long time partner on indescribable levels in Natasha) listened in to communications that he _should have_ been a part of. Where had it all gone wrong?

After a dark moment, Stark sent a look over at Natasha, a look that said _How will you react to what you're hearing?_

"Fury-" Natasha had snapped the word but stopped, brows furrowed. (_It's Fury?_ He really _should_ have been part of this. For christ's sake, it was his own commander-) That one word grabbed Barton's attention despite the glowing repulsors still pointed in his direction and the thoughts flying through his mind like a flock of startled birds. Natasha paused for few, genuinely listened to less; Fury was the top of that shorter list. "Yes sir." She murmured with a look of forced acceptance. "Clint-"

"You're with me, Robin Hood," Stark called, his voice. It earned him a glare, the way he spoke over Natasha, though she seemed to not want to turn her head the amount needed in order to see Stark.

That was a red flag. Before he could advance toward his long time partner and get a better look at her injuries in an open, lit space, Steve had taken several steps forward. The shield was attached to clamps on his shoulder and the automatic rifle had long since been abandoned. "Agent Romanoff," Steve's voice was softer. "That wound should be looked at..."

"Talk to Fury, Clint." Natasha would not be lead away without completing her thoughts; this was no exception. "Sort it all out."

Normally, those stunning ice blue eyes of hers would have his attention no matter what the dialogue. A partner, a friend, a most trusted ally- that was what he saw in those irises. There was rarely a moment when those eyes betrayed her inner workings; while not cold and dark, those eyes were a flawless cover, presenting nothing but their stunning, disarming, mesmerizing color when necessary and conjuring up every emotion known to man when needed. Right then, however, his own eyes were on the red line he could finally see, the one that drew the blood that stained the bow he held in his hand. Compared to the vision of a mortally slit throat that Loki had lead him to believe, what he _did_ see was superficial, so gloriously superficial that, for an instant, he allowed himself to feel the relief that so badly wanted to flood his body, an airy feeling that went from the middle of his chest down to his extremities in a wave that floated over his skin. Her neck was red, her gloveless hand was red, but she was not pale, weak, _lifeless_. The red she claimed covered her ledger was not covering _her_.

A heartbeat later and he gave a slow blink and took control of the relief, gathered it from where it had pooled and pulled it back into his mind, locked it away until he could afford the freedom of expression. That time was not now, not when he was turning on his heels, glaring into the brown eyes of Tony Stark (who had taken off and was holding the Iron Man helmet under one arm like a football), and following the man back up, into the main areas of the hellicarrier. Natasha and Steve did not follow.

As if rebelling against the circumtances that brought him to be where he was Barton did not settle into following Tony Stark. He walked alongside the man and bitterly reveled in the knowledge that _he_ knew the layout of the carrier far better than the millionaire (but not as well as Natasha). Where Stark occasionally paused to run through the mental layout of the carrier in his mind Barton simply took the next - and correct - walkway to where he _knew_ he was headed. The lower deck storage areas gave way to research hallways (where he noted the presence of... Bruce Banner? _I need an update. Badly._) and then the administrative ring of rooms that would lead to the central control station.

Stark paused before entering that sector.

"I don't really get what's gone on with you," The man said, one brow arched and his head tilted. His voice was as confident as it had always been on newsreels but with a touch of curiosity that may have been a substitute for actual sympathy. "You _are_ a friendly, right?"

"Are you with SHIELD?"

Stark furrowed his brows.

"With," Barton reiterated. "or against?"

"Seeing as the tantrum throwing demigod is trying to take this place down along with the rest of known civilization, I'd have to say I'm on SHIELD's side."

"We'll get along well enough."

The dry humor made neither man laugh. Instead Stark nodded once and went off, his destination in the direction of the storage area. (He couldn't really plan on wearing that suit for much longer, could he?) With Stark vanishing from sight through a pair of thick double doors, Barton allowed his face to contort into a snarl. With a noise that was half human, half animal, all ungodly frustration, Barton clenched his fist around the bow until his knuckles were as white as the hallogen lights above. Once inside the first room inside the administrative sector Barton turned, let out a scream that echoed sharply, and slung the smart bow across the room, against the wall. The weapon was made for combat, made for durability, but that did not stop pieces of metal and electronics from splintering away from the intelligent handle like the glowing petals of a firework flower. The bow unfolded itself to its true shape from the impact. Dammit all if bow's arms were scratched but intact, their shape not at all warped, with the blood on one end still glimmering in its half-dry state and reminding him _you don't know what you have done._

The damage did not make him feel better. If anything he felt as if he had done more needless damage to innocent property. Sure, the bow had blood on it, _Natasha's_ blood on it, but that was because it had been in _his_ hands. Sometime after Loki had 'assumed control' he must have gone and recovered his bow from the ruins of the Project Pegasus fascility, or perhaps stolen the bow before the place even blew. Had he not, had the bow remained at the bottom of the sink hole and lost for eternity, than it would not have been used against his partner, would not have drawn that blood, would not have to lay on the floor on the other side of the sparsely furnished room, a shell of its former glory.

Just as he was, a confused shell of what he had been- and wanted to be again. Before anything could happen, before he could take one step down the path of healing, first he had to _know_; what had he done, who had he done it to, what had he used?

Aside from himself and his weapon the room looked not unlike an offical interrogation room that would normally be found on the underground level of a police precinct. Three chairs, two on one side and on one another, surrounded a metal table that was bolted to the floor so that nothing human could move it. Barton took a seat in the single chair. He pulled the seat back so there was a yard of space in between himself and the table, plenty of room to put his elbows on his knees, clasp his hands and rest his forehead on his laced fingers.

The automatic door to his right opened.

"Agent Barton."

With an exhale that made his hunched over body slouch even farther, Barton looked up and over. The sight of the SHIELD commander brought back the taunting sensation from earlier, that sense of knowing yet _not_ knowing why the sight and thought of certain people or objects triggered a feeling of helplessness. First the incendiaries and now Nick Fury himself. With tired gray-green eyes Barton watched as Fury strode to one of the two free chairs. Instead of sitting down he stood, one gloved hand resting on the black of the silver, gleaming furniture.

The commander's one good eye stared down at him, unwavering. He wore that same mask that Natasha wore, that Barton, himself, had long since learned to adorn- the difference was that both his own and Fury's were no where near as absolute. Despite years of experience Barton could see flickers of apprehension in Fury's gaze just as the man possibly saw the outer arms of the storm of anger and regret that was churning in his chest, making it seem difficult to breathe.

At last Fury glanced over at a few shards from the bow that had made it onto the table. He made no comment on the damage.

"You _are_ with us in the land of the living once again, aren't you, Agent Barton?"

"More or less." The archer murmured. "What the hell happened?" He sat up then before the slouch could hurt his back. "After Loki appeared in the base?"

"For one, you were right," Fury's smooth, accented voice rang out. "There was a door and he came through from th'other side. Where that other side is or what is over there, we have no _idea_, but it can't be good. To top it all off he's _lost_ the most potent powersource in human history."

Barton phyiscally started. "Wait- he _lost_ the Tesseract? He showed up out of nowhere and he just _lost_ _it_?"

"According to Thor, Loki worded it somethin' like _I've sent it off, I know not where._ No wonder old timey civilizations spoke that way if these fellows still are-"

"Thor?" Barton gave a sharp chuckle, one of disbelief. "What? You're telling me he's back? Coulson and I saw it ourselves, he vanished back in New Mexico before we were moved to-" Barton stopped himself before Fury could interrupt. After he shook his head Barton brought a hand up to rub his temple. "Right. There's probably quite a lot I need an update on." Understatement of the year. "Banner is here, Rogers is here, _Stark_ is here, Thor isn't that much more of a stretch. What a gathering."

"I'm not really going to question it," Fury shrugged one shoulder. "I'm just glad the god of thunder is here and willin' to help."

Barton's eyes drifted down from Fury to the second chair. Through the short burst of banter it had seemed odd that the second chair had remained empty when he so clearly remembered that there were _three_ in the room for a reason, not for the aesthetics of power play. His foot began to tap out of restlessness. "Where's Coulson? Shouldn't he be in on all this?"

"Barton," Fury spoke up with a tone meant to stun into silence. It worked.

"Coulson is dead."

For the second time in that day Barton felt his blood run cold. No time was given for him to psychoanalyze his reaction of pure horror with a dollup of abandonment; Fury was speaking again before Barton could even get out a surprised sound or an aghast _What?_ The SHIELD commander's voice dropped in octave and he closed his good eye in respect.

"The medical team called it a few moments ago."

"Is that," Barton managed to get out, his throat suddenly dry and his breathing quick, silent but quick and deep. "what you called over the radio for? Before I came up here?"

"Yes." Fury's eye was still shut.

"Was-"

"It was nothing of _your_ fault, if that is what you are wondering." There was a reason Fury was as powerful a man as he was. Reading the situation and those involved was just one bullet point on a list. (_The association of Fury and the word "bullet" did not play well in the back of Barton's mind._) Only then did Fury took a seat in the chair his hand had been resting on. The man folded his arms and leaned forward across the table. "The two turbines - number one nearly blown to smithereens and number three manually taken offline - may have been but _you _were nowhere _near_ Agent Coulson."

"How, then?" As much as he hated to admit it his voice had been on the edge of panic, like a child lost in public desperate to find his caretaker. This was Coulson they were talking about- _Phil Coulson._ Other than being damn good at his job and overall _adored_, Coulson was always there. Always. The man was the most genuine "people person" Barton had ever come across. Rough assignment? Get a hand on the shoulder from Coulson. Had a problem? Call Coulson. Stuck in the medical ward? Get a visit from Coulson. Was Coulson across the country or world at the time? No big deal, there will be a video conference from Coulson. The man was so in tune with every person, agent or no, that the very idea of him being gone... It felt as if he had suddenly lost a brother, or even a father figure- there was no end to the support the man would give, the hours of sleep he would lose, the dedication...

There were not enough words in any language to describe just how much the man behind the scenes meant to those on the front lines and beyond.

Barton hung his head and hid his face in his palms after he took in a long, shaky breath.

"I have no time for a formal evaluation or interrogation," Fury murmured as he stood; the chair made a hell of a racket as he pushed it back, scraped it across the floor. "We've got a crazy son of a bitch out there causing indescribable havok. Protocol can wait as much as the war council won't like it. I need my best out there to make sure there will _be_ a day where protocol can happen- Hawkeye, you're in."

Before he exited the room Fury put down a slip of yellow paper on the silver table. The sound of the slip hitting the table caused Barton to pull his head from his hands. Instead of examining the writing right away, he glanced up in Fury's direction.

"That there is a medical order. Consider yourself the key to getting Agent Romanoff out of the medical ward and back to quarters. Deliver that for me, if you could."

Hawkeye answered without missing a beat. "Yessir."


End file.
